I get what you're saying, but these are the ways that management finds the margins that allow you to receive cheap products on your doorstep in 2 days.
If someone can make money by fraud, that money is not justification to allow fraud. The US economy relies on dependable contacts.
Which law? "The Law" as an ideal, is impartial. That's irrelevant. In practice, applied law (and the cousin enforced law) leads to biased results, favoring the wealthy and the status quo while remaining "impartial".
We shouldn't let a defeatist attitude discourage attempts at improvement.
I'm very libertarian- but at the end of the day I will always support the government authority to punish theft. And a failure to pay employees the agreed upon rate is theft.
This isnt about being caught- the evidence is clear as day and was presented in court.
This is about a failure of our legal system to protect basic rights of a laborer to be paid the agreed upon rate.
Why are people so quick to defend the powerful?
John Steinbeck wasn't wrong.
As such, we have leaders and followers.
By definition of leaders and followers, most people will be followers, whether for genetic or environmental reasons.
Followers will always support those who are leaders. In our current society, that would mean the powerful.
If you don't believe me, look at behavioral sciences. Most people will shock someone to death just because an authority said so (yes the Millgram experiments were biased, but the results aren't completely invalidated by that)
Packing an individual box takes minutes. So it's a question of capacity, and it's pretty binary. If they have enough capacity then a large majority of items can ship within a couple hours. If they don't have enough capacity then the 90th percentile shipping time becomes indefinite/never. A situation where packaging takes an extra day, end of story, is unlikely and unstable.
And I'd say that some robots are R&D, so not having money for them has no effect on shipping times, and the rest are a cost-saving measure, so they'll always have the money.
It's not like Amazon is running a zero sum balance sheet here. They have profits this could take out of and maintain all their service and speed.
I'm with you though, it costs the consumer nothing.
Framing it that way, of course people would respond negatively to price increases.
"Amazon workers now paid for all the time they're clocked in, prices may be affected" is a lot more sympathetic to workers.
Please refer to this documentary about Walmart. They're not just anti-labor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal-Mart:_The_High_Cost_of_Low...
While Walmart didn't invent bad behavior, they're pretty good at it.
If I wanted to take law into my own hands I might as well go to the local gangsters and smugglers.